Medicine: Farewell to Plague?

Other diseases may have taken a greater toll of human life, but none has
spread more terror than the Black Death. In the 14th century, plague
reached from Asia through Asia Minor to Europe, where it killed 25
million people (one in four by conservative estimate, perhaps one in
three). Three centuries later the rat-borne scourge devastated London,
killing 70,000 one-sixth of the population. Then it lay relatively
dormant, taking a regular annual toll in parts of Asia where it was
endemic. In 1896 it burst out of South China, through the port of...